Opening Every Door for Everyone
Supporting disabled youth to design bold, brilliant accessibility solutions.
Who Are We
Access All Areas (AAA) is a youth-led initiative that empowers disabled young people and those with learning, access, or support needs to improve inclusion and accessibility across Aotearoa New Zealand. Founded by disabled youth, for disabled youth, AAA draws on lived experience to help organisations understand barriers, co-design solutions, and create services that work better for everyone.
Vision Statement
We envision an Aotearoa where disabled youth are confident leaders, deeply connected to their communities, and empowered to shape a more inclusive future.
Mission Statement
AAA empowers disabled young people to lead, connect, and drive meaningful change by using their lived experience to improve inclusion, accessibility, and service design across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Why This Matters: A Snapshot of Urgent Need
- Nearly half of disabled students report unmet needs in education
- 6 in 10 disabled students are bullied — one of the highest rates globally
- Disabled students are twice as likely to leave school with no qualifications
- Four times more likely to not be in education, employment, or training
- Yet 72% of unemployed disabled adults want to work
Consequences of exclusion
Amelia: "I used to believe I wasn’t capable of much, so I stopped dreaming big. No one ever told me my disability didn’t mean I had to lower my expectations."
Isla: "Whenever I tried to talk about being disabled, it felt like people got awkward or defensive — so I just stopped bringing it up. But not talking about it made me feel invisible, even with my friends."
Kahu: "I kept pushing through like everything was fine because I didn’t want to be seen as the ‘difficult’ one. By the time I admitted I needed help, I was burnt out and barely holding it together."
The Access Lab
The Access Lab helps organisations uncover accessibility, inclusion, and customer experience opportunities they cannot see on their own. Through a youth-led co-design process, disabled young people work alongside decision-makers to identify barriers, generate solutions, and create meaningful change.
Participants are not simply consulted on problems. They work collaboratively with organisations to develop practical solutions, test ideas, and present recommendations directly to decision-makers. The result is deeper insight, stronger organisational capability, and better outcomes for everyone involved.
What Could We Show You?
We recently partnered with an organisation that had already spent years investing in disability inclusion, accessible services, customer experience, and workplace inclusion.
19 Recommendations
Even then, Access Lab participants identified 19 practical recommendations for improvement, spanning communication, customer experience, accessibility, staff capability, digital services, and support processes.
This highlights a simple reality: no matter how mature an organisation's inclusion journey is, there are always insights that only emerge when disabled people are directly involved in designing solutions.
If an organisation already recognised for its disability inclusion efforts could uncover 19 new opportunities through an Access Lab, imagine what disabled young people could reveal about your organisation.
Trusted By Sector Leaders
Access Lab brings together disabled young people, professionals, and decision-makers from across business, government, education, and the disability community.
Recent events have involved senior disability sector leaders, Paralympians, public servants, business leaders, disability advocates, and community leaders serving as judges and mentors. Judges unanimously reported positive experiences and all expressed interest in future involvement.
This creates a rare environment where lived experience, professional expertise, and decision-making influence come together in one room.
Who Is It For?
Access Lab works particularly well for organisations looking to improve:
- ✅ Customer experience
- ✅ Service accessibility
- ✅ Digital products and services
- ✅ Recruitment and talent pathways
- ✅ Workplace inclusion
- ✅ Community engagement
- ✅ Staff capability and disability confidence
- ✅ Policy, programme, and service design
What Your Organisation Gains
Practical Insights
Access disabled young people who are current service users, future customers, and future employees.
- ✅ Honest feedback on customer experience, accessibility, recruitment, communication, and service design
- ✅ Insights grounded in lived experience rather than assumptions
- ✅ Identification of barriers that may otherwise go unnoticed
- ✅ Direct engagement with disabled young people and their supporters
Actionable Recommendations
Move beyond awareness to practical change. You'll receive:
- ✅ A comprehensive post-event insights report
- ✅ Prioritised recommendations for improving accessibility and customer experience
- ✅ Prototype concepts developed by participants
- ✅ Practical solutions that can be implemented immediately or incorporated into longer-term planning
Recent Access Labs generated 20 practical recommendations for participating organisations, providing tangible opportunities to improve services, systems, and customer experiences.
Staff Capability and Culture Change
Access Lab is also a powerful professional development experience. Many volunteers begin the programme unsure about how to communicate effectively with disabled young people, how disability affects customer experiences, and what barriers disabled people face in everyday interactions.
By the end of the programme, volunteers consistently report:
- ✅ Greater confidence engaging with disabled people
- ✅ Increased understanding of accessibility and inclusion
- ✅ Stronger person-centred communication skills
- ✅ Greater awareness of barriers within their own systems and services
- ✅ A stronger commitment to inclusive practice
"The desire to be treated as an individual and just how important this is to the participants. I had totally underestimated how much of an impact this has when we don't get it right."
"The respect we need to offer to the person, not the carer. They are independent individuals."
Volunteers often described the experience as "inspiring," "totally unexpected," and "something I will remember for the rest of my life."
The result is lasting culture change, stronger disability confidence, and employees who become champions for accessibility within their organisation.
Why It Works
Most organisations rarely have the opportunity to work directly alongside disabled young people as partners in problem-solving. Access Lab combines lived experience, relationship building, co-design, and organisational learning.
Rather than simply identifying problems, participants develop solutions and present them directly to decision-makers. This creates deeper insights, stronger organisational buy-in, and recommendations grounded in real-world experience.
Outcomes
By the end of an Access Lab partnership, organisations receive:
- ✅ A comprehensive insights report
- ✅ Practical recommendations informed by lived experience
- ✅ Increased staff capability and confidence
- ✅ Stronger relationships with disabled communities
- ✅ Exposure to future talent and leadership
- ✅ Positive social impact and community visibility
- ✅ Evidence to support accessibility and inclusion initiatives
- ✅ A meaningful demonstration of commitment to disability inclusion
Lasting Value
The greatest value of the Access Lab is not simply the recommendations it generates. It is what happens when disabled young people are trusted to lead the conversation.
Organisations Leave With
- Practical solutions
- Stronger internal capability
- Better understanding of customers and communities
- More accessible and inclusive services
- Greater confidence to drive change
Young People Leave With
- Greater confidence
- Leadership experience
- Stronger peer connections
- New relationships with employers and decision-makers
- Greater understanding of how organisations operate
- Proof that their voices can influence real-world decisions and create meaningful change
At the same time, staff experience their own transformation. Volunteers often enter unsure about how best to engage with disabled young people and leave as advocates for more inclusive services, workplaces, and communities. Many describe the experience as one of the most meaningful professional development opportunities they have experienced.
By bringing disabled young people and decision-makers together to co-design solutions, organisations not only gain valuable recommendations—they build internal capability, strengthen an inclusion-focused culture, and create champions for accessibility across their workforce.
When disabled young people are given the opportunity to lead the conversation, organisations gain insights they would never uncover alone. Young people gain the confidence, connections, and leadership experience to shape the future.
Better services. Stronger organisations. More inclusive communities.
Meet Sean Prenter
Kia ora, I'm Sean, founder of Access All Areas (AAA) and facilitator of the Access Lab. I started AAA because I have experienced both the barriers and the opportunities that shape the lives of disabled young people. Living with a traumatic brain injury, I have experienced challenges in education, employment, communication, and social participation. I have also experienced the power of the right support, opportunities, and community.
My background spans disability advocacy, governance, youth leadership, and public policy. I co-founded and served as Co-President of the National Disabled Students' Association and have held governance roles with organisations including the Disabled Persons Assembly, Your Way | Kia Roha, and the Wellington City Council Accessibility Advisory Group. I have represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the United Nations, APEC, the Global Disability Summit, and the Pacific Disability Forum. Closer to home, I was recognised with the University of Otago Young Alumni Award for my contribution to disability leadership and advocacy.
Professionally, I hold a Master's degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and work in public policy. Through both my professional and lived experience, I have seen how often disabled young people are excluded from the conversations and decisions that affect their lives.
In workplaces, I have sometimes felt unable to discuss the support I needed to succeed. I have experienced assumptions about my disability before people understood my skills, and I have encountered services that were difficult to navigate or left me disengaging rather than seeking support. These experiences reinforced for me that accessibility is about more than compliance—it is about creating environments where people feel understood, valued, and able to participate fully.
As a student, I accessed more than $30,000 in scholarships and educational opportunities. Yet I rarely saw other disabled young people accessing the same opportunities. That experience reinforced the importance of confidence, support, and connection in helping young people recognise their own potential. Those experiences showed me how much talent, insight, and leadership potential is lost when disabled young people are excluded from opportunities or decision-making. That is why I created Access All Areas.
I believe disabled young people should not just be consulted on decisions that affect them—they should help make them. Through Access Lab and our wider programmes, we create opportunities for young people to build confidence, develop leadership skills, form meaningful connections, and influence real-world decisions. My goal is simple: to help disabled young people build the confidence, clarity, and connections they need to thrive, while helping organisations benefit from the insights, ideas, and leadership that disabled young people bring. When disabled young people are trusted as leaders, innovators, and decision-makers, everyone benefits.
Articles & Podcasts
